that father/daughter thing...

This is my father. He is a very complex man with a strange history and a cynical, pessimistic and wise outlook on life. He is difficult, cantankerous, confrontational, argumentative, honest, fair, intelligent and by far the wisest, most insightful person I have ever met. I love him dearly and dread the day he dies. He is 82. He has a wife, three children and three grandchildren who I have never met. They don't know I exist - or my brother. My mother is not his wife although I think she would have loved to have been once. My brother is so like him they cannot meet without clashing. He makes my mother sad and angry and happy all at once. He used to make me sad and angry but not any more...

When I was at primary school other children used to laugh at me because my father was so old he looked like my grandfather. He was often mistaken for such. He used to go away every saturday on a bus and my mother would cry for the rest of the day sometimes. He was always at home when I came back from school on mondays. He always went away at the beginning of every school holiday and only came back when term started again. I didn't spend Christmas with my father until just 4 or 5 years ago. I knew he went to his 'other family' but I only found out about them by searching through his drawers in the middle of the night when he was away.

Now his wife has left him I have been to his other house. There is nothing there to suggest I or my brother exist. There are lots of cards from his other children and grandchildren. Sometimes I feel so sad about that. I know he loves me dearly but I liked it better when I thought I was his only daughter. The other children are all much older than my brother and I. I am jealous - insanely jealous of every moment they spend with him.

Yet I forgive him everything and am angry with my mother. Because she let herself get in a position where she was second best for someone? Because she was 'the victim'? Why? Because he acknowledges and accepts his failings and she doesn't see hers? I'm not sure I will ever know..........